St. Cloud Florida Stake Blog

One of the most important takeaways Kaylee Bishop took from her mission? She doesn’t need a missionary badge to be an instrument for the Lord.

“Even though I’m not proselytizing for ten hours of the day, I try and look for opportunities that I can be a better missionary. You can still have missionary opportunities and be a hand of the Lord,” she says. 

It’s something Kaylee’s mom has noticed. Like when they go to the grocery store and Kaylee strikes up a conversation with the cashiers, asking them about their day. Kaylee says she wasn’t always like that. 

“I wasn’t the kind of person to  just go up and just be like, ‘how you doing?’ But I think my mission just helped me to look out for people.”

Kaylee served in the California Fresno Mission and was called to speak Spanish. Having grown up in Florida, when she received the call she had to consult a map to know which part of California she would be living and serving in for the next eighteen months. She grew to love everything about it–the little communities she was a part of, the members she met, and the range of people she connected with. “To be able to teach people and come across all different kinds of walks of life was just super cool,“ she says. 

As she learned to look out for people as a missionary, Kaylee realized there was one thing that was crucial to getting it right. 

“The importance of relying on the Spirit,” she says.  “As a missionary, you’re taught on how to better follow the Spirit, because obviously it’s the work of the Lord and you can’t do the work of the Lord without the Spirit,  right? It’s a lot harder.” One experience close to her heart crystalized this principle. Kaylee and her companion had just knocked on a door where no one was home, and that was when Kaylee got the prompting to knock on the door of the house across the street. A woman answered who had never heard of the missionaries before. “We were pretty bold with her,” Kaylee says, “and she started eventually opening up.” They shared a scripture with her, comforted her, and told her that God loved her. “Ultimately, that’s what we share as missionaries, is that God loves us,” Kaylee says. “We felt the Spirit so strong in that contact. Having that experience really helped me to know I’m only His hand doing His work.” 

Kaylee doesn’t want to stop now that she has been released from full-time missionary service. “Even after a mission, I’m still just His hand, just His instrument and He really is in charge of this work. We’re all missionaries to some extent, called to help gather Israel. So hopefully I’ll help and serve as much as I can.”